Commercial Real Estate Deal Pipeline

[Chris Yeakel]

Hi BP community,

I’m in the process of searching for my first commercial property and wondering what the best way is to build a pipeline of properties to analyze.

I use LoopNet although I haven’t heard the best things about it. Is there a better way to search for and analyze commercial properties on a larger scale?

My goal is to be able to find a vast amount of properties to analyze one by one, building my funnel/ pipeline, until I find my winner.

Any advice is much appreciated!

-Chris Yeakel

[Joel Owens]

Really depends on what you are trying to buy.

Example if you want retail type stuff that is more local and under 1 million I would be clueless for that.

If someone wants high quality STNL or MTNL nationally in certain higher price points I have a vast network for it state by state.

Just know also that for instance certain national brokerage sites not much product is on there because the local brokerages that belong to that big company the process to get their listing on the site can take 2 to 4 weeks for approval. So lot's of these brokers have their own website where they sell internally or just on their websites and the property does not show up on the national site.

Also a broker would need to know if you are looking for a good deal or a GRAND SLAM? In other words if someone wants a 1 in 10,000 property and a buyer is going to take 1 year or longer to find it for a 1 million property and 30,000 check then no way in the world I am spending time on such a venture. The smaller deals I tend to work with more realistic buyers. If they want a deal of the century then I will put time into finding properties but these are 30,40,60 million dollar type properties where If I find it I will have a grand slam payday.

If you want an amazing deal at a low price point then you really need a newbie grunt commercial agent that is desperate for anything and not established who can work the relationship night and day because they have nothing else going on. The other commercial brokers are too busy doing deals with multiple clients. 

Hope it helps.